By Julia Sourtzis-Anderson
Misogyny: a person who has a dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
Example: Andrew Tate
Andrew Tate is a British-American internet personality. Tate started out his career in 2016, on a reality tv series called Big Brother. But he was kicked off of the very popular program because of a shocking video that revealed him beating a woman with a belt, which he later said the woman wanted. Then in 2021, Tate formed a university where he would teach people how to make money and start their own businesses.
In early 2022, Tate started to become more and more popular on social media platforms such as Tiktok. He was especially popular with males, ages ranging from 13 to 40 years old. Tate’s brand is all about making men “manly” and he’s frequently called himself the “King of toxic masculinity”. Tate is trying to bring back old-fashioned stereotypes about women, namely the idea that women belong to their husbands.
In one interview Tate said, “You can’t be responsible for something that doesn’t listen to you. You can’t be responsible for a dog if it doesn’t obey you, or a child if it doesn’t obey you, or a woman that doesn’t obey you”
Tate’s been all over the internet for the past 8 months and women have been trying to call him out on his behaviour. But the second they do, his fanboys come to his defence. Nobody was listening to women when they said he was bad. They just shrugged it off. Tate kept his TikTok fame even though his account was violating community guidelines. It seemed like his reign of hatred would go on forever. Teenage boys would forever be taught that Tate was the so-called “Top-G” and that women are inferior to men. But it all changed when Dasz Black entered the conversation.
Daz Black is an English Youtuber who is known for his gaming and reaction videos. In late August, Daz made a video surrounding Tate. The video was around an hour or maybe longer and basically tore the man apart. Tate was exposed for who he really is, a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, pig who doesn’t deserve his platform. Tate was officially called out on the highest level. Soon after Daz’s video was released, Tate was officially banned from Instagram. He’d lost many of his followers, and everybody was showing their public support for his fall.
After Tate got banned from Instagram, the media went crazy. There was a post in particular that a lot of people were reposting. It read “Stop giving Andrew Tate a platform to glorify misogyny". But what irked me is that the guys who posted this post were the same people who loved him two months ago. No, they still love him. They’re just using this pathetic attempt at feminism to hide their blatant misogyny.
Something else I've noticed is that a lot of the time when women would talk about Andrew Tate they would get ridiculed. No one believed us for months on end. Yet when a man comes in and says the same stuff, suddenly everyone starts paying attention.
After being banned Tate released an apology video. In the video he said he doesn't hate women, he loves them. He said he was going to donate money to some women-centered charities. If you think he was being genuine, then think again. Tate is just trying to recover his Instagram account. He doesn't care about women and he certainly does not respect them. He said if a woman saw herself as an equal to him then she’s “the exact kind of woman I would never give my time of day to”.
There has been some discourse about Andrew Tate creating an act. That his whole toxic-masculinity-misogyny-rules-women-such thing is fake. He’s either doing it for views or to make a mockery of the incels who really think like this. I can see why people could think this. Tate has said some stupid things, for example, he said he wouldn’t give a person CPR unless they were a “hot female” and that having a heart attack makes you weak. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it’s an act or not. He’s still teaching boys how to think about women. Young boys are so susceptible to his antics. Even if you watch his videos for other reasons you can still get misguided by his misogynistic thinking. When young guys start listening to men like Tate it starts to warp their perspectives. It starts small but will erupt into a forest fire of deep-seated hatred.
Overall, Tate is contributing to a culture of violence towards women. He does not respect them nor see them as people. Andrew Tate is a misogynist who is spreading his hateful thoughts to other people and he is not someone you should be looking up to.
Writer’s Note: If you would like to learn more about Andrew Tate’s antics, I recommend Daz Black’s video. It was extremely insightful and very educational on this topic. Also content warning for the video, Daz Black does talk about abuse and goes into detail about the horrors of Andrew Tate. https://youtu.be/J3Ups5yT7P4